/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.1975985]

How do you explain scientifically why people find things funny to someone who has autism and no sense of humor?

How do you explain scientifically why people like music to someone with autism?

There was this guy on a student forum who talked like a robot and always asked for scientific reasons for emotion-based things such as these. I'd link his posts but he deleted them after forum members got hold of his number and started prank calling him.

[Anonymous No.1975993]

People laugh situations that make them uncomfortable.

[Anonymous No.1976015]

music is some voodoo shit that plays with the recall function of the brain through timbre and melody

[Anonymous No.1976040]

People with Autism have a difficult time understanding when someone is joking, and when they are being serious, so when someone tells a joke they often rage at how stupid the comedian is instead of laughing. However they can find jokes funny so long as its made clear to them that they are hearing a joke.

Not all Autistics hate music either. Their brains have difficulty filtering information so they don't experience background noise, everything is blaring and obtrusive, but that doesn't mean they can't experience the sensations music provides if they can find something they want to listen to and don't try to do anything else at the same time.

The scientific answer to any question of emotions is: People evolved that way, maybe for a useful reason, but maybe not, and its all just chemicals in the brain.

[Anonymous No.1976055]

>>1975993
I hypothesize that they get the impulse to laugh because they're subconsciously trying to defuse a tense situation.

Also, people laugh when they're suddenly confused or have their expectations confounded. I have yet the Hypothesize about why they do this.

[Anonymous No.1977098]

Kim Peek wasn't autistic. He had FG Syndrome.

[Anonymous No.1977164]

What do you mean by "why"? I've done evolution formally but only casually studied neurology and psychology, so I'd talk about the development of complex social interaction and group bonding from primate social grooming as well as the sexual co-evolution of appreciation for those things (women wanting funny guys and rock stars to bone them) and the ability to create them stemming from the requirement of intelligence to do those things. And you have to have appreciation for them to create them ("aristic taste", "musical ear" and a "sense of humour" are all needed to create the thing they're used to appreciate) so even under an unsophisticated evo-psych viewpoint men would still be able to get them. I'd guess that bower-birds would all have some weak sort of aesthetic sensibility and the ability to "enjoy" their bowers for their own sake which leads them to be better bower-builders than otherwise.
Plus there's the whole role of humour in social dominance and relationships which comes up.

[Anonymous No.1977172]

children born of 2 scientifically inclined parents (typically engineers or scientists) are statistically WAY the fuck (in units of "the fuck") more likely to be autistic than those born of 2 parents who were not scientifically inclined.


children born of 1 scientifically inclined person are also more likely to have an autistic child.
the explanation given was that the kind of thinking required for serious and successful science is assocated with a higher likelihood of autism.


it essentially means that, on average, significantly more scientists/engineers are "slightly" autistic than the normal/bulk population.
this work was done by Sasha Baron Cohen's brother who is a researcher at Oxford.


no joke.


look it up...


type in:


Cohen autism engineer


in google... there are plenty of references to his work

http://www.wellsphere.com/brain-health-article/the-autism-and-engineer-hypothesis/469237

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Baron-Cohen

[Anonymous No.1977173]

>>1976055
True, but I think things being unexpected is also part of humour. I work as the dishpig's assistant and the head chef asked me to get him a drink from the other side of the kitchen. I misheard him as offering to get me one due to the noise and said "Yeah, I'll have a coke thanks". The second chef cacked himself laughing before I realised what had happened. The bottom level casual worker telling the boss to get him a drink is a really suprising situation as well as being socially uncomfortable

[Anonymous No.1977186]

>>1977172
I have aspergers (been properly diagnosed). My mum's a doctor and her dad's an engineer, while my dad shows a fair few aspie traits (apart from being a technician he sometimes doesn't realise when he's doing something inappropriate or acting like a dick to people). I'm inclined to believe that aspergers and autism are caused by a variety of genes, with a fair few recessive, having haploinsufficient alleles, or showing genuine incomplete dominance. Possibly some severe cases of autism are caused by just a few genes far upstream on the regulatory or biochemical pathways involved in the autism spectum, but I haven't looked at the literature so who knows if that's even been investigated.

[Anonymous No.1977194]

>>1977172
His cousin. Also, Sacha is going to be playing Freddie Mercury in a film soon which should be fuckwin.

[Anonymous No.1977197]

>>1977194

Hope they give him proper teeth prosthetics